Transitioning to Fall

September is upon us and that means that August, typically the hottest month in Central TX, is past us.  I survived and logged 174 miles in the process.  I'm pretty happy with that, but have a goal of 200+ miles for this month, aiming for 45 miles for each of the first two weeks and then 50+ for the last two weeks of September.  I'm hoping that the increased  mileage will time with a drop in daily temperatures.

A snapshot of Secret Beach in Austin, TX

The labor day weekend was warm in Austin, with daily highs hitting triple digits.  It made me very lethargic and hermit-like during the middle of the day.  Boyfriend was out of town, so I was flying solo as the single mom to Bailey.  I got up very early each morning (by 6am) and headed out for my run and then did not emerge for more exercise until the evenings, when I took Miss Bailey on walks.  If I went out during the day, it was errands that utilized the air conditioned car.  The exception was a trip to Secret Beach with Bailey on labor day.  We went with her friend Raisin.  Secret Beach is a stretch of sandy shoreline along the Colorado River in East Austin.  It is very hipster (perhaps you already got it from the name) and people will bring coolers and beach blankets and hang out.  It is also great for dogs who like to run around, splash and generally be hooligans.

Bailey (left) and Raisin (right), doing doggy things and 'sploring

Bailey, having a great time

Chasing after boys

Enjoying the water and trying to cool off

The heat has continued to build since this weekend and through this week, with triple digits nearly every day. Boo! I hate it!  The good news?  Tomorrow might be the last triple digit day of the year!  I glanced at the 10 day forecast and tomorrow is projected to hit 104F (yuck!) but then highs in the 90s for 9 days after that.  Average highs for the second half of September are high 80s and 90s, so I can only hope it is all downhill from here.  There is nothing pleasant about physically feeling your skin burning from the UV rays in the five minutes it takes you to walk between buildings on campus.

Anyways, here is my week thus far:
Monday: 8.51 miles over hills, 90 minutes of flag football
Tuesday: off! Boyfriend returns :)
Wednesday: 8.16 miles, 90 minutes of flag football
Thursday: 2km swim

Wish me some cool, dry weather!

A Day in Echternach (& a two-nation run)

So this post is coming out a day later than I wanted to write it.  I have been trying to stick to a twice a week posting schedule.  I usually write posts on the evenings that Boyfriend has band practice, but this week the practice got cancelled.  That meant more opportunities for together time and less opportunities to be a nerd on my computer (which is a good thing).  Bailey also had a special play date last night, so there was that...

Bailey in a kiddie pool, being crazy

She really likes swimming and splashing when it is hot out.  Don't worry, she definitely got a bath after this mud-water-fest.

So today I want to write about the fourth place I visited on my Europe-trip (Biarritz, Bordeaux and Paris already recapped).  Before that, a quick workout recap:

Monday: 90 minutes of football practice (too sleepy to run in the morning)
Tuesday: 2100m swim (too lazy to get up in the morning for run, Argh)
Wednesday: 8.25 mile leisurely run
Thursday: 8.26 miles total, 3.25 miles hard on the track (3x1mile, 400m hard)
Friday: 8.00 mile recovery run over hills & 2000m swim

With that out of the way, let me tell you about my visit to Echternach.  After Paris, boyfriend and I took a train to Luxembourg city.  Why you ask?  Well, we were heading east anyways to visit a friend of mine living in Germany and we wanted to visit some interesting places along the way.  I had never been to Luxembourg and it seemed like a really easy way to add another country to the list of places I have been.  It's really easy to get to Luxembourg city, which is the capital, by high-speed train from Paris

Map of Luxembourg

Although Luxembourg city does have some stuff to see, it is like a lot of capitals in Europe and not super unusual, so instead we took a bus from Luxembourg city to Echternach, in the northeast corner of this tiny country.  It only took 45 minutes between the capital and Echternach, including many stops.  Echternach is the oldest town in all of Luxembourg and sits right on the border with Germany.  Heads up, Luxembourg city has the only train station in the country, so to get anywhere else you have to use the public bus system, which is very nice and was surprisingly easy to use.

Echternach is located in the Mullerthal region of Luxembourg, which locals refer to as "Little Switzerland" because of the hilly terrain, green hills and abundant hiking.  We picked this small town to visit because it was quiet, pastoral and close to the very old and interesting Beaufort castle. The afternoon after we arrived it was very drizzly, but we took a bus to the Beaufort castle, which was quite empty and very interesting to visit.

Beaufort castle

Beaufort castle and ME!

The castle had many rooms but the torture chamber was the most intriguing

Thumb screws make me sad

After visiting the castle, we had some time before the next bus back to Echternach.  We decided to take a short hike because there was a trail head directly across from the castle.  It was still drizzling and quite wet, but the trail was beautiful and it was a nice way to pass the time.  

There were sheep grazing adjacent to the trail head.  The lambs were very cute.

Me on the trail.  Everything was so green, unlike TX

We had a relaxing and quiet evening in Echternach, which is not exactly a happening place after hours.  That was okay though because it was one of the only days where we weren't constantly in motion trying to see things.  The next day we explored the town, which is small but pretty, and visited the abbey, church and abbey museum. Then we took a bus back to the Luxembourg train station and heading back into France.

Echternach town center.  That is the original celtic cross transported to the town by an Irish missionary in the 1100s.  Also note we had a brief period of blue sky in the morning.

Of course, I started the day with a run, and it was the best of my entire trip!  About a half mile from the hotel are some Roman ruins, which are adjacent to a lake that is surrounded by green hillsides.  I started my run with a loop around this lake, about 3 miles.  Everything was green and dewy and it was early morning so it was very quiet and hardly anyone was out.  I saw little foxes bounding through the hills and it was just beautiful.  I wanted to get some more miles in, so I headed back into town and then ran along the Sauer river that creates a natural border between Lux and Germany.  This river is about 1/4 mile from the hotel with a jogging/bike path right along the banks.  Again, it was a breathtaking place to run.  Couple that with cool morning temps and I found myself running a great pace effortlessly.  I passed some cows grazing in the field and the path put me less than 10 feet from them.  I found myself extending the run farther than intended and then reached a footbridge that crossed the Sauer to meet some hiking trails.  I ran over the bridge into Germany and decided to run in two countries that day (definitely a first for me!)  Although I wasn't in Germany very long, it was a pretty cool experience.

My run in Echternach was magical, pastoral and everything I could possibly want from running in a new place.  Although not the most exciting city I have visited, I really enjoyed the day there and would recommend it to anyone venturing to Lux.  Don't forget to pack your running shoes!

Coding like a Nerd

So I realize that it has been a LONG time since I posted something.  Suffice it to say that the glamorous grad school life has been busy and once I fell off the bandwagon, it got hard to get started again and easier to just not write.  I'm still debating if I should do this regularly, as I am getting close to defending my PhD and getting a job in the real world (i.e. real employers).

Running has been going as well as one might expect, given the intense heat of a TX summer.  I think I might finally be catching on to the TX lifestyle after 4 years because I have actually been pretty consistent the last month.  Here is the week so far:

Monday: swim 2km
Tuesday: 8.69 mile run
Wednesday: 8.19 mile run, including 3 miles of track work
Thursday: 8.15 mile run
Friday: swim 2km after work (planned)

I'm planning on running Sat and Sun too, for roughly 45 miles for the week.

I think I'll write more about running in upcoming posts, but for right now, I want to address my recent adventures in the land of programming.

Most of my time at work is devoted to maintaining the health and happiness of many cell lines, setting up and running experiments, analyzing very simple data about those experiments, reading research papers and responding to mass quantities of email.  In the world of science PhDs, I am known as an "Experimentalist".  This means the data I produce comes from experimental measurements.  Contrast that with the "Computationalist" who uses sophisticated computer software or their own code to model in silico (that means in the computer) how something works in real life.

I recently took on a side project at work that involves a lot of computational work.  I decided to work on this because I felt it would compliment and expand my skill set, which is heavily experiment based.  Also, Bioinformatics is a hot area in Biotechnology and I want to be competitive for the job market.  At first, it was a little daunting because I haven't programmed in a long time (about 4 years).

Guess what?  I am totally enjoying this!  I actually forgot how much I love writing code, it is like a puzzle and so logical and these are things that I love.  Of course, this shouldn't surprise me because I did got to MIT and I am a nerd (I totally embrace this).  As a freshman at MIT, I had to learn my first programming platform, which was MATLAB.  MATLAB is really popular for engineers and I had to use it all throughout my chemical engineering core courses.  I remember being totally lost at first, but by the end of that first class, I really enjoyed it.

A few years later, I was hired by a small company in Cambridge to design a database for their cell culture data, so I taught myself VisualBasic, which is the programming language built into Excel and allows you to write your own functions that run over Excel.  Pretty useful if you do a lot of stuff with Microsoft Office.  After learning VisualBasic, I made my dad a database to keep track of his wine inventory in Excel.

In my senior year at MIT, I took an intro to programming class through the Computer Science Department (i.e. people who really know how to code) and learned Python.  This class was a lot of fun because all of the assignments were building complicated games that utilized the programming skills.  It was also really well taught and covered a lot of concepts that I had not previously learned on my own.

So, when I had to write some code to analyze long sets of DNA sequence for my work project, I busted out my Python skills and am super proud of my script!  It elegantly does all of the analysis I want and then saves it nicely formatted in Excel spreadsheets for me.  I was dragging my feet getting started on this because I hadn't used Python in so long, but really enjoyed doing it.  Everyone who uses it LOVES Python.

Sadly, I also had to use another computer language for this project, the dreaded R.  Yup, that is the name, just 'R'.  This language was written by statisticians and I hate it.  The reason I hate it is that the syntax makes.no.sense.  Pretty much all the other languages I know (MATLAB, VBA, Python) and languages I don't know but hear are useful (C, C++, Perl) use very similar syntax, so it is really easy to learn them once you know at least one.

R does not follow this pattern and I have tried three times to really learn it and I keep failing.  It doesn't help that the documentation is really poor.  Everyone I know who uses R HATES it.  Sadly, I needed to use R to analyze publicly available microarray data and was forced to figure it out.  Fortunately, I have an amazing friend on campus who is pretty proficient with R and he gave me some scripts he wrote and taught me how to modify them.  So, now I am confidently using a tiny portion of R, but I still hate it.  Anytime something goes wrong, it takes me 243571x longer than it should to correct, because I only have the vaguest idea how the language works.

So now I have probably left you without a doubt that I am one of the nerdiest runners out there.  But, maybe some of you like coding?  Do you?  Please share!

In other news, today is Bailey's 2nd birthday and 1 year mark of living with us!  She is so great and makes me very happy.  And now some pictures of her, because she is way cuter than me :)

I'm super spoiled, but my M&D wouldn't have it any other way

I love my cousin Ike

I like window gazing, pillows and my personal couch.

Race Review: GSA 5K

On Sunday, April 1st, I ran the 2nd GSA 5K.  Proceeds were dedicated to UT graduate student travel grants. The event took place on the roads of UT campus.  The first event was held in 2010.  This was a small local event.  I cannot find the results online, but I think 150-200 people were registered.  It was open to runners, joggers and walkers.  Registration was $25 for UT affiliates and $30 for members of the general community.  This included chip timing (although results aren't online...), a cotton t-shirt and a wide array of post-race refreshments.

Because this was a dog friendly event, Boyfriend and I took Ike and Bailey with us.  The race started at 8:30am.  Because we live close, we jogged approximately one mile from home to the race start.  We made sure both doggies did all their business before we got to the start, which facilitated a smooth and pleasant event for both humans.  Instead of porta johns, the student activities center was open and we were able to use indoor, clean bathrooms.  That was definitely a nice plus of such a small event.  It was also easy to pick up our bag when we arrived and would have been easy to register on the spot.
The event started a little later than advertised, closer to 8:45am than 8:30am.  The weather was mid 60s but quite humid and I was feeling very sweaty.  My legs were also sore from the previous day's half marathon. Boyfriend and I lined up with the dogs along with the other runners.  Walkers were given a separate start after the runners.  Although I was concerned that Bailey would be lackadaisical about the run, it couldn't have been farther from the truth.  Apparently she is highly competitive!  She took off in sled dog style when the race started and literally pulled me through the crowds.  She very much did not want people in front of her.  I was wearing my Garmin and for the first mile, we fluctuated between 6:30 mile pace and 8:00s.  Although my legs were tired, I made every effort to go at her pace and just pumped my legs and held on.  The course makes two loops around the football stadium and then in the third mile takes an out and back along 24th street.  You can see the course here: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=468066

Despite being a short race, the route had quite a few uphills with 238 feet of climbing.  Each loop around the stadium has a steady hill and the out of the out and back is uphill.  I think Bailey made some classic new racer (it was her first) mistakes; she went out too fast and had a hard time holding the pace on the hills.  I was feeling tired too :)  Ike caught us on the 2nd loop and we ran right near each other for the rest of the race.  In the end, though, his stamina and experience reigned supreme and he crossed the finish a second or two in front of Bailey and I.  They finished first and second dog!  My Garmin read 25:14, giving us an 8:08 pace.  Not bad for a warm, muggy double header weekend and Miss Bailey's first race!

Garmin Woes

Yesterday I had some serious Garmin problems.  The run started off rough enough; I didn't get a good night's sleep because my neighbors were playing music and being loud past 2am.  I had wanted to do my long run, but the lack of sleep meant that I got up later than I wanted and I not feeling refreshed, so I swapped it for the 8.74 mile run I had planned for Sunday morning.  Because I didn't get started until 8:30am (not to mention the humidness that is the essence of Austin), it was a very muggy run.  I was concerned about my sweatiness causing my Garmin 405 to go schizo, which it inevitably does if the bezel gets wet, so I locked the bezel.  You can do this by simultaneously pressing the enter and quit buttons.  When the bezel is locked, you can touch it without changing the watch settings.  After some rainy runs when my watch was going crazy and changed a bunch of its settings on its own and managed to stop recording run data, this seemed like a really good idea.  Sadly, I was wrong.

Just a few minutes after I had locked the bezel, the watch started beeping and flashing "bezel locked", which I knew wasn't normal.  At the next stoplight, I tried to unlock the bezel (which you do by simultaneously pressing the enter and quit buttons) but it did not work, no response at all!  Then I tried pressing each button on its own, still no response.  I was a little confused and annoyed, but the auto pause and auto resume seemed to be working fine, so I attributed the bizarre behavior to my sweat on the watch and resolved to worry about it when the run was done.

When I finished the run, I still could not stop the watch.  I got out my Garmin 405 manual, and proceeded to reset the watch, which you do by holding the same two buttons down for 7-10 seconds.  This worked and the screen went blank.  What is supposed to happen next is that the watch restarts itself automatically and displays the time.  Unfortunately for me, that did not happen.  In fact, nothing happened.  I tried restarting several times, and then only response from the watch was a blue line across the screen that would gradually fade and a soft beep.

I was very sad!  I checked some forums online that described similar problems but no real solution.  I checked the charging contacts on the watch and noticed one was a little rusty so I cleaned it with isopropanol and a q-tip.  Then I set the watch up to charge.  After a few minutes, the watch beeped and the screen turned back on, showing the time and the message "bezel locked."  Again, however, I could not unlock the bezel or get the buttons to do anything.  I repeated this process several times and was then resigned to the reality that I would need to get some help from the Garmin guys, but they are closed on the weekends so I would need to wait until Monday.

The reality set in that I would probably have to send the watch in to be repaired.  With that reality came that sad, sad feeling of being without the Garmin and my dependency on it.  This, of course, is one of the reasons I was reluctant to get one, which makes running without one feel so hard.  I find that using online maps to estimate the distance of my routes will overestimate, sometimes by a lot, so running without the Garmin almost feels like cheating!  With in a few minutes, I of course had developed a plan to deal with this, and it involved only running those routes that I had already measured with the Garmin until it was repaired.  Creativity would take a back seat to accuracy.

Bailey gives kisses

Today, twenty-four hours later, I decided to check on the watch one more time.  The screen was still blank, so I tried restarting it.  This time, I got no blue line or beep.  This was new, and surprising.  Then my expensive undergraduate education and 3.5 years of graduate school kicked in.  I realized that if the bezel had been locked then the watch couldn't go into power save mode, which meant the battery had probably been drained.  I plugged it back in, and sure enough, the charge was at 0%.  I let it charge up and then tried the buttons.  Like magic (or science!), it was working perfectly again.  I was very relieved.  A little patience and perseverance and the problem was fixed.  More importantly, Garmin was staying with me.  If someone else has this problem, I hope this post helps.


Bailey and I then took it on a nice, 2.70 mile walk to confirm that it was back to normal.  She is the best sidekick.

Puppy Running

Workout: (Yesterday) 2.7 miles with Bailey and 5.9 with Ike for 8.6 total

Ike and Bailey know how to run

(Today) 8.0 miles solo

Yesterday I ended up postponing my run until the evening because I was lazy and didn't get out of bed in the morning.  Both dogs desperately needed exercise, having been holed up all day while I was busy doing very important research.  I decided to split them up and take Bailey for the first part of the run, then swap her for Ike for the last 6 or so miles.  It would be ideal to run with them together, but that is an impossible task.  Their running styles are not at all compatible (Ike likes to run very fast and Bailey is in it for the experience -- i.e. she's slow).

Separating them was not an easy task.  Bailey was forlorn to leave Ike behind, and frankly Ike was mad at me. He loves running with me and knew that that was what I was doing (every time I touch the sneakers, he knows).  He cried at the door and the Garmin was taking an extensive amount of time to sync.  Finally, Bailey and I were off and we ran two laps of a nearby park.  Overall, Bailey's running is improving, but you wouldn't have known that from yesterday's experience.  She wouldn't budge from her slow and steady 10 min/mile pace and was totally resistant to any efforts on my part to speed things up.  In fact, every 5 or so minutes, she would just come to a complete stop and refuse to move as I tugged the leash.  So I would stop too, and watch her sniff the air, sniff the grass, and watch some stranger walk by.  After about a minute, she seemed to be over whatever it was that initially brought her to a halt, and we would resume our steady plod.  A few weeks ago, we ran 4.3 miles together (her personal distance record) and she seemed much more motivated than she was yesterday.  Sometimes she seems to really enjoy getting out on a run with me, and other days she just seems uninterested.  I can't say I'm not disappointed; I would really love for her to be a constant running partner.  I wonder if this is the universe preparing me for the possibility that I will have human children that reject recreational running?  That might be a rough pill for me to swallow...

While I don't know whether Bailey loves the running, I know she loves ME!  Yesterday when we were on our run, I tripped over my own feet (actually on a wooden step at the top of a rough and steep trailed hill) and went down hard on my shin and hands.  Bailey immediately came over to revive me and lick me back to health.  My face, hands and shin were thoroughly checked out before she felt safe having us continue.  Glad to know she won't leave me for dead if something serious happens.  She knows who buys the peanut butter in the house.

Ike, unlike Bailey, has thoroughly made up his mind about running, and he loves it.  As soon as he got on the leash yesterday, he took off at full speed like a sled dog.  I've found that trying to reign him in is more effort than its worth, so we typically do some or most of our runs on trail so I can let him off the leash.  Instead of fighting with him, I usually run hard and fast when he is on the leash, and then take it easier on the off-leash trail sections.  It's like a surprise tempo workout!

This morning, I ran solo because I wanted to do a route that had no off-leash sections.  Ike knew what was going on as soon as the alarm went off and was really annoyed at me when I shut him in the bedroom and left without him.  He's back at his house now, so tomorrow morning it will just be Bailey and she doesn't seem to notice me in the morning.  She is a late sleeper.

So that is probably more than you ever wanted to know about the time I spend running with dogs.  However, I love them both and running with dogs is a lot of fun and I think it is funny how different their personalities are. And for illustrative purposes, here are a few pictures from their adventures in the park this weekend:

Ike enjoying a juicy stick

Ike chasing Bailey.  She probably stole his stick

Bailey shaking it out

A brief moment where both are still; Ike is concentrating on the stick

Ouchy calves

Workout: 7.75 miles in 1:11 (yesterday)

Yesterday's run was quite uncomfortable, for at least the first 4 miles.  My calves felt very tight and were sending PAIN! and STOP! signals to my brain with every step.  It certainly didn't help that despite it being February, the temperature was 78F and humid.  I can't believe this is winter in Austin.  I could use a little more Boston right about now!  Running in hot or humid weather is not my fav.  In fact, it makes me noticeably slower and my muscles always feel sorer.  Ideal running conditions for me are dry and 40-60F.  Hook me up with some of that, weatherman!

Anyways, yesterday the calves were driving me crazy and I had to stretch them out when I was stopped at a busy intersection.  I attribute a large part of the discomfort to the humidity, but I know what the other culprit is: Heels.  Just the day before, I had worn wedge heels for a graduate student poster competition and industry networking event I had attended.  You are probably thinking these were some really high heels if it caused serious calf pain, right?  Nope, about 1.5 inches.  They are Dockers and as far as heels go pretty comfortable, actually.  I think the problem is really that I hardly ever wear heels.  I know they look stylish, but they aren't exactly conducive to doing wet lab research requires a lot of walking and standing, basically 8 hours of it every day.  Further, there aren't a lot of incentives to dressing my best when working in the lab.  Nothing like a splash of bleach or e. coli to compliment the outfit...Also, heels usually hurt my feet, which compromises my running, and I often put running as a higher priority than style...what can I say?  So needless to say, my feet are accustomed to flat, sensible shoes or going barefoot (which I do most of the time at home.  Don't worry, I don't do this in the lab.)

Wednesday's poster session required 6+ hours without sitting, at least two of which required me to stand graciously in front of my research poster, smile profusely, and expound the awesomeness and optimization of recombinant cell line development.  My feet were so tired and hurt so much when I got home Wednesday night.  So much in fact, that Bailey and I had a special couch potato session watching lots of TV with our feet (and paws) up.

On the bad side, the day of heel wearing carried over tired and tight muscles into Thursday's run.  On the bright side, I did win an award for my poster (the Baker Hughes Excellence in Research Award).  Boyfriend won an award as well (his was from Dow), which made me very proud.  We found out afterwards that the awards came with prize money from the sponsoring companies (sweet!) and were pleasantly surprised.  Neither of us knew that when we had signed up to participate.

What will I do with my winnings you ask?  Well, first I need to buy a new pair of dress shoes that are completely flat so I don't have a repeat fiasco of this nature.  I'm not kidding! A BME friend of mine was rocking the cutest and most comfy looking pair of professional looking ballet flats and I am going to find me a pair!  The balance of my winnings?  Why, I will use them to lavishly spoil my adorable pup-daughter, of course.

Bailey (left) and her cousin, Ike (right).

Lucky little Bailey has her cousin Ike visiting for the next few days.  Aren't they cute together??

Bailey

Bailey, on 'her' couch

In a short amount of time, my new dog has become firmly ingrained in the family and quite spoiled.  She had lots of toys, biscuits and bones keep arriving from her grandparents in the mail, she has two dog beds, is allowed on the couch, and even has her own jar of peanut butter.

Bailey and Sadie, resting

She is a social butterfly.  She regularly gets invited by the neighbor across the street to play with Holly, the German short haired pointer.  She has a second playdate with Sadie, a lab hound puppy, tomorrow.  She goes to the dog park with her pitbull friend, Raisin.  And, of course, she has sleep over parties with her beloved cousin Ike.

Bailey (with the bow) and Ike

She has lots of energy and spunk, which we take advantage of with lots of playtime, trips to the park, and of course, runs.  Because she is so young, we do not run for more than 20 minutes with her, but we go on jogs between 1 and 2 miles regularly.  She is definitely fast, but when we started, her leash/running manners left much to be desired.  She would often run across my body, tangle her legs in the leash, lunge after a squirrel, stop dead to stare at a cyclist or lag behind me.  By applying a consistent running style and some basic leash training, I have noticed a dramatic improvement, making running with Bailey much more fun for all of us.

Bailey wears a bow!

And while she isn't perfect and sometimes drives me crazy (can you say separation anxiety?), who can stay mad at a pup this cute?  I sure can't for very long...

Summer Running in Austin: Part 2

I think I'm getting the hang of this summer running thing...

Previously, I wrote a post about the difficulties of running during the intense, long Texas summers.  And while the heat has not abated, I am am impressed by the adaptability of the human body because my runs seem to be getting better and logging miles in the heat seems to be getting a little easier.  Good thing too, because I have at least another 6 weeks of pretty high temps.

Walnut Creek, Austin, TX

This weekend, I had two great runs.  On Saturday morning, I took Ike to Walnut Creek in North Austin for a 72 minute trail run.  We both love running in that park; Ike because he can be off the leash and explore (he once flushed a massive, male deer), me because there is over 11 miles of trail network that twists and turns and covers all kinds of terrain, so it is pretty hard to get bored.  I started out at a relaxed and comfortable pace, tackling the steep uphills and screaming downhills with grace.  Around 50 minutes, I was still feeling good and conscientiously picked up the pace, finishing sweaty but strong.  I was pleased that I felt no soreness and hardly any fatigue in my legs.  I know the same distance on road would have a very different result, got to love those trails!

For the rest of the morning, Ike came over to my house for a play date with Bailey.  Unfortunately for Ike, she is full of energy and had had no exercise yet that morning.  The result was an unrelenting desire to play, which manifested itself as jumping on Ike and following him wherever he went.  Poor Ike!

Yesterday, I had a 12 mile long run on my schedule.  Instead of getting up bright at early at 6am, I snoozed my alarm and slept until 9am.  The lack of sleep throughout the week had caught up with me.  I was pretty bummed about not getting the run in, and set my mind to getting it done in the evening, something I have really never done with a long run, and especially not in the middle of the summer, when temperatures in Austin can persist above 95F well beyond 10pm.  Well, I ate a late lunch and made sure to drink plenty of fluids.  At 7:45pm, I headed out the door, 20 oz of water in my hydration pack and prepared for my first ever evening long run. Fortunately for me, late afternoon cloud cover had kept the temperature below 100F.

I started sweating about 5 minutes into the run and was pretty well covered 20 minutes in.  I ran west, under the MoPac expressway, and continued on a hilly course through the affluent neighborhoods surrounding Tarrytown and Mount Bonnell.  I watched a beautiful sunset, and 45 minutes in found myself running in the dark.  I was careful to watch for cars and stay out of their way.  Otherwise, I really enjoyed running in the dark, which was quiet and tranquil.  I had plenty of material on my iPod and tackled hill after hill with gusto.  Before I knew it, I was crossing back under MoPac with only 2 miles left on the run.  At this point I was pretty thirsty and finished off my water, and while I was tired, I never felt extremely fatigued and was able to hold a strong pace all the way through.  I finished 12.38 miles in 1:46:41, giving me an average pace in the 8:30s.  Considering all the obstacles: summer heat, long distance, dehydration, night time running, hills, I was very pleased.  Of course lots of cold water and a cold shower helped too.

So what is the take away point?  Pushing through uncomfortable conditions, be it hot or cold weather, will eventually pay off.  The human body is an amazing machine and can adapt to a lot of conditions.  Eventually, the rewards will come, and in this case, it was two great weekend runs.  Hoping the momentum will carry me through the rest of the week!

Bailey: The New Kid on the Block

I haven't previously mentioned this, but I spend a lot of time volunteering with dogs at my local shelter, the Town Lake Animal Center.  This shelter is currently the largest No Kill shelter in the country, striving to maintain a 90% live outcome rate for dogs and cats.  I work with the dogs, taking them for trail walks, play and potty breaks, and working with customers interested in adopting them.  I find it to be a very rewarding use of my time, especially because I love dogs.

This past week, with extreme heat in Texas (over 50 days above 100F) and overcrowding, the shelter found itself dangerously above capacity.  Boyfriend and I decided to foster a dog and bring her home, out of the heat.  Her name is Bailey and she is a 10 month old female, 40lb Plott hound mix.  She is very energetic, playful and affectionate and has been doing wonderfully with us at home!  She doesn't bark or chew on things and seems to be housebroken.  She already knows 'sit' and 'shake'.  She is also very friendly with other dogs and really enjoyed meeting (and pestering) Ike.

Last week, I took Bailey for a few, short runs.  At the end of my run, I took her for a 1.75 mile loop nearby our house.  She was a little distracted by noises and passerbys, which made it difficult to run at an even pace, but overall, she did really well!  The pace was slower than I'd like, but I expect that will improve with practice.  I used a yuppie puppy harness, which makes controlling her very easy.  Her biggest joy came from a few squirrel sightings, which caused her to go nuts!  She was trying her hardest to get after those poor squirrels and could not be distracted even when we were a 100 yards away.

Bailey had her spay surgery yesterday, so she is not allowed to run with me for the next week, only walks allowed.  I will definitely miss taking her out for a jog, but we will go for walks instead and the week will pass quickly enough.

For any animal lovers out there, please consider adopting from a shelter or rescue group, in the process you will save a life!  Of course, you can always foster or volunteer, which is another great way to help.